“You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. And you are 9 more times likely to choke to death in your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack. Indeed, those living in the American police state are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.”
“People’s fear drives them to demand that the U.S. national security establishment continue doing more of the things that produce the crises that are scaring them to death. Today, many of the fearful are demanding more bombing, more killing, more maiming of people in the Middle East – in the name of keeping us safe — and blocking out of their minds that that is precisely what the national-security state has been doing for decades in the Middle East that has produced the crisis that is now scaring them. And they are also now demanding that NATO absorb even more nations, while blocking out of their minds that is certain to heighten the crisis with Russia and scare them even more.”
“The recently-released 2015 Global Terrorism Index report shows that deaths from terrorism have increased dramatically over the last 15 years – a period coinciding with the ‘war on terrorism’ that was supposed to end terrorism. The world’s two most deadly terrorist organizations, ISIS and Boko Haram, have achieved their prominence as a direct consequence of US interventions. The interventionists are desperate to draw attention from the fact that their policies contribute to terrorism. After the Paris attacks, neocons like former CIA director James Woolsey actually pinned the blame on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden!”
“Not surprisingly, the U.S. national-security establishment has used the threats that its own polices have produced to do the same thing that France and other European countries have done throughout history — suspend the rights and liberties of the citizenry in the name of keeping them ‘safe’ from the enemies that the national-security establishment itself has produced. While it’s true that U.S. officials are not yet bashing down people’s doors in search of terrorists or communists, it’s also true that they now wield such totalitarian powers as military arrest of citizens and their indefinite military detention, torture, and assassination, all without due process of law and trial by jury.”
“Francois Hollande has come into his own. After nearly bankrupting France and raising taxes so aggressively that he has driven many of France’s best and brightest abroad, Hollande has found his voice as a wartime president. Bombing Syria is not going to forestall further violence in France. In fact, such actions will surely increase the chaos and over time add to the bloodletting. But Hollande has found his voice! He bays for blood and lobbies Britain to join him in bombing Syria. The Middle East mistakes of the past decade are about to be repeated. And actually, after a point one cannot call them ‘mistakes.'”
“Terrorists strike, people feel fear, and the terrorists win. This is foolish. More Americans are killed by their cars or bathtubs, but you don’t fear those things. You shouldn’t fear terrorism either. Fear has been bad for America. Every time the public feels afraid the politicians do something stupid. For example: We felt fear about 9-11 so we imposed the Patriot Act and the TSA on ourselves. We felt fear about supposed weapons of mass destruction, and so we invaded Iraq. That invasion was the petri dish for ISIS. Now we’re afraid of ISIS. So that means we must be on the verge of doing something else idiotic. Please refuse to participate in the stupidity. Instead, actively oppose it.”
“Four former US air force service members, with more than 20 years of experience between them operating military drones, have written an open letter to Barack Obama warning that the program of targeted killings by unmanned aircraft has become a major driving force for Isis and other terrorist groups, calling for a rethink of a military tactic that they say has ‘fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like Isis, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantánamo Bay’. In particular, they argue, the killing of innocent civilians in drone airstrikes has acted as one of the most ‘devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world’.”
“Even authoritarian and totalitarian states can’t prevent domestic terrorism. What hope do relatively open societies have? Open societies abound with ‘soft targets,’ that is, noncombatants going about their everyday lives. They are easy hits for those determined to inflict harm, especially if the assailants seek to die in the process. We also know, as U.S. officials acknowledge, that NATO bombing of jihadis boosts recruitment. So if Americans and Europeans want safer societies, they must discard the old, failed playbook, which has only one play — more violence — and adopt a new policy: nonintervention.”
“Today’s horrific attacks in Paris have moved us all, and the more we learn, the more our hearts ache,” said Governor Cuomo. “These were cowardly acts of evil by people who have inexplicably chosen to believe in radical hatred above all else.”
‘Inexplicable’; perhaps, for the pathologically dense.
Let France and all nations following its path know that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State and that the scent of death will not leave their nostrils as long as they partake in the crusader campaign, as long as they dare to curse our Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him), and as long as they boast about their war against Islam in France and their strikes against Muslims in the lands of the Caliphate with their jets, which were of no avail to them in the filthy streets and alleys of Paris. Indeed, this is just the beginning. It is also a warning for any who wish to take heed.
France? That effete land of art, fashion, and cheese?
It’s not as if they should be surprised. After all, if the Paris bombings were a reaction motivated by French foreign military adventures, we have seen this before. From the article:
This isn’t the first time France’s involvement abroad has led to terrorism at home. In 1995, Algerian Islamists set off eight bombing attacks that killed eight people and wounded 200 in Paris to punish France for supporting the government in that country’s civil war.
There is, however, said to be no specific intelligence indicating there is a direct terrorist threat to attack Britain. The heightened measures in the UK are partly to reassure the public [..]
Knowing Syria was a critical piece in its energy strategy, Turkey attempted to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to reform this Iranian pipeline and to work with the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline, which would ultimately satisfy Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations’ quest for dominance over gas supplies, who are the United State’s allies. But after Assad refused Turkey’s proposal, Turkey and its allies became the major architects of Syria’s “civil war.”
Mainstream media outlets repeat the comfortable myth that terrorist attacks are primarily motivated by the desire to impose Sharia law in Western countries. While the precise mechanism by which random acts of violence lead to a formal Sharia law regime is yet to be identified, it is perhaps more instructive to examine the statements made by the attackers themselves, which invariably cite not only their religious beliefs, but specific acts of military violence carried out by U.S., NATO, and/or GCC partners in Middle Eastern countries. Two recent examples are the statements following the Charlie Hebdo and November Paris attacks.
But let’s step back to the bigger picture for a moment:
It is not hard to imagine that every one of these attacks that senselessly kills children, friends, and loved ones creates motivation to retaliate among those remaining. ISIS recruiters offer a vision of utopia to a generation of young people that has only known war, poverty, and personal tragedy.
Explaining the inexplicable: How can terrorists be gaining ground versus the most powerful governments in the world?
In Iraq, then Libya, then Egypt, former U.S.-backed authoritarians heading secular governments were deposed one by one. Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were victims of openly executed military regime change operations, while Hosni Mubarak was the victim of a series of events that led to the present U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The latter was accomplished through an alphabet soup list of NGOs:
Washington’s democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based,quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.
The Middle East Partnership Initiative – launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks – has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.
USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).
The US government doesn’t issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED’s executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.
A main conduit for channeling the State Department’s democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.
This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in “peaceful” political change overseas.
We know where the military dictatorship gets its money and weapons. Where do terrorists get the money and weapons with which they can become an organized army, occupy territory, and train recruits?
The source of motivation for terrorist attacks is apparently not “inexplicable”. The means by which those attacks are carried out also does not seem to be at all “inexplicable”.
What may be the truly “inexplicable” and uncanny part of the process: the ability of Western governments and media to cultivate such mass ignorance that they are able to pretend to be mere victims of purportedly “inexplicable” attacks, thus enabling ever-ongoing seizures of extra-constitutional police and emergency powers that are unlikely to be relinquished voluntarily.
The Reichstag Fire in Nazi Germany was perhaps the template for this mechanism of permanent ’emergency’ escalations of state power, which has today evolved into a global phenomenon, fueled by ISIS and at the same time fueling ISIS through its reactions.
One could ascribe failures to stop future attacks on power elite ‘interests’ or on civilians to malice, or to incompetence instead, depending on your perspective.
What’s the answer?
Interpret the latest attack as another datapoint indicating failure of the policy, and reverse course. Withdraw from foreign military occupations, renounce illegal emergency powers and secret spying on citizens, convert payments to foreign militaries and governments into aid for war victims including resettlement domestically, and sweep away the hubristic ruling class ideology that enabled this global human rights catastrophe and policy disaster in the first place.
Which course will the U.S. and NATO governments pursue from here? Perhaps a course they could have chosen almost 10 years ago that would certainly not have trained and armed ‘friendly’ terrorists, would certainly have not motivated young people to join terrorist organizations with more anger-inducing tragedies, and would certainly not have deliberately destabilized an entire region of the globe through armchair regime change pursuits.
Only a madman would repeat the same courses of action and expect differing results. So are Western leaders mad, or are they openly pursuing the same results?
Did you like this? Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
